Yelp Reviews for Lawyers - Manage Your Exposure and Reviews.

If you’re a consumer-based plaintiff’s attorney you’re likely already aware of the pros and cons of Yelp, maybe you love it or maybe you hate it. However, it’s undeniable that it’s probably a part of your client’s life and they're likely to use Yelp to seek reviews on everything from doctors, dentists, and restaurants to yes... even lawyers. One study suggests that Yelp is the most trusted website for attorney reviews. You can no longer ignore the power Yelp wields to the small and medium sized law firm.

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Getting the Best Visibility on Yelp

There’s a few things you should do to improve your visibility and ranking on Yelp. Most of it’s obvious, but I bet there’s a couple you haven’t thought about.

• Make sure you’ve claimed your profile and it’s filled out 100%. Many lawyers have not claimed their profile which sometimes causes inaccurate information to float into the "pre-baked" profile (your default business profile). With a full description, pictures and history of your law firm you’ll be accurately found and search engines will see keywords and phrases within your profile. The better this information is, the more people will see you and realize that you care about how your law firm is presented.
  
• Choose your categories. Yelp allows you to choose up to 3 categories, (practice areas), of law to be included in. If this section goes unfilled Yelp will try to determine the categories that you’ll be included in, and sometimes they suck at that. It’s also important not to include yourself in areas of law that you have no interest in just to try and get more visibility or traffic. Do you really want calls for estate planning if you're a criminal defense attorney?
  
• Use Yelp’s Dashboard to Track Improvements. The best way to know if effort is having an impact is to validate the results. As the business owner you can see how many times your profile was viewed and what actions people took on your profile. As you make adjustments mark them on your calendar, review Yelp’s dashboard in 60-90 days and see if there’s been a change. Rinse and repeat.

What if My Law Firm Has Bad Reviews?

Negative reviews can be just as influential as positive reviews in a couple ways, it’s important that you understand that just because you have a few bad reviews doesn’t mean you should abandon all hope. Users of Yelp understand that not every business is always going to be 5 stars, and many are suspicious if they see only praise and admiration. Let’s be honest, lawyers can piss people off.

There’s usually no “winner” in a divorce and there’s always a criminal defense client that will think their lawyer didn’t fight the District Attorney hard enough. However, if all of your reviews have a consistent complaint then you have a problem on your hands. If your policy has changed due to complaints, let people know. Like you probably tell your clients, the worst thing you can do is ignore the problem and hope it goes away on it’s own.

• Report Inaccurate or Incorrect Reviews. Yelp allows the verified business owner to contest a review and request that it not be counted towards their rating. When you log into your Yelp business account you can report a review and request for Yelp to manually remove it from your rating average. If you're successful and the review is removed it will still always be there, under “Not Recommended Reviews”, but it won’t be immediately visible and it won’t figure into your 5 star average. If a review goes against Yelp’s content guidelines, was done by someone who did not hire you, or you can prove it's a competitor you may be able to get the negative review suppressed within a few days of your request.
• Reply to Negative Reviews Appropriately. People want to hire lawyers that can solve problems, not get in a shoving match on the Internet. When you reply in a sincere manner specific to the reviewer’s complaint users take that into consideration. Essentially you're telling prospective clients “I care about my clients enough to respond when there’s an issue”. This is not your chance to rant about the client from hell, it’s a PR opportunity to prove that you’re not the person the reviewer makes you out to be and that there’s probably more to the story.
• Seek Positive Reviews. Have you ever heard the saying ‘If you don’t like someone’s story write your own’ (Chinua Achebe)? Yelp officially doesn’t want you to solicit for reviews, and your local Bar Association, (ABA, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco), may also have guidelines and suggestions regarding seeking and responding to client reviews. However, there’s no rule saying you can’t link to your your Yelp profile from your online biography or in your Email signature. Whatever you do, DON’T PURCHASE “POSITIVE REVIEWS”. Some marketing companies are promising positive fake lawyer reviews to help improve your Yelp presence. Guess what, Yelp is aware and has a pretty advanced algorithm that can sift the wheat from the chaff. Spend your advertising dollars elsewhere. After all, if you have two bad reviews in January, and then get eight 5-star reviews in March don't you think that will look suspicious?

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